The use of microwave energy to cook food products has gained great popularity and can be used with great speed and simplicity in the cooking of most food products. One very significant disadvantage of microwave cooking, however, is the absence of surface browning reactions with most food products. While simple expedients such as coating with sauces and the like may be effective to provide the desired coloring or browning to meat products and the like, these methods have not proven practicable for products which contain uncooked pastry crusts. In such a product, a true browning of the crust itself is required to make the cooked product acceptable to most consumers. While such a product may be adequately heated or cooked in a microwave oven, the resulting appearance severely limits its consumer acceptability.
Moody U.S. Pat. No. 4,252,832 discloses a syrup-like composition for use in coating food products to be cooked by microwaves. This syrup is said to effect a desired browning of various foods when cooked in a microwave oven, including frozen pies and pastries. The Moody composition comprises a disaccharide, water and preferably a minor amount of monosaccharide. Salt is optionally added to the composition to counteract the sweetness of the saccharides when such sweetness is undesirable. In view of current trends by consumers toward reduction of their intake of sugars and salts, it is generally undesirable to utilize browning agents having high concentrations of sugars and salt as contemplated by Moody.
In view of the wide variety of products which include unbaked pastry crusts, it would satisfy a significant and long standing need in the art if a dough composition could be formulated to exhibit normal browning reactions upon cooking of these products in a microwave oven.